The Perfect Coffee For A Cold Irish Night

In the year of cocktails it is time for the next celebration. It is National Irish Coffee Day. So brew that perfect cup of filtered coffee and make it into the smooth, tasty and warming drink we call, not Brazilian Coffee, but Irish Coffee.

The first commercial airline route from London to New York was a bit demanding. You couldn’t go straight from the UK to the US without refueling. The planes first used for the route were Boeing’s so called “Yankee Clipper”, a long-range Pan Am luxury flying boat, seating 77 passengers. The Clippers were the reason Foynes Flying Boat terminal was built in the Limerick County of Ireland in 1937, becoming Ireland’s first transatlantic air base.

On a particularly dank and cold winters night in 1942 the Pan Am flight to New York had to return to Foynes due to bad weather. The passengers took refuge at Joe Sheridan’s restaurant and bar where they were offered something to raise their spirits, a mixture of hot coffee, sugar, Irish whiskey and cream. One of the passengers asked whether it was a Brazilian Coffee. Sheridan answered that “No, this is Irish Coffee”.

The original Joe Sheridan recipe reads like a poem. “Cream as rich as an Irish brogue; coffee, strong as a friendly hand; sugar, sweet as the tongue of a rogue; and whiskey, smooth as the wit of the land”.

10 years later the American travel writer and Pulitzer Price winner Stanton Delaplane stumbled upon the drink at Shannon Airport, that had replaced Foynes, and he brought the recipe back to San Fransisco. At the Buena Vista Cafe he and his friend Jack Koeppler, the then owner, started experimenting to try and recreate the original Irish Coffee. They were so meticulous in their efforts that they finally concluded that the lightly whipped cream should be no less than 48 hour old. All their hard work payed off in the end and still today, more than 70 years later, the Buena Vista serves up an whopping 2,000 Irish Coffees every day.

The glass, originally a tea glass, was designed in 1925 by German-American designer and artist Josef Albers.